What I Learned From the 2019 FIFA Women’s Soccer Teams
The principles of the teams in this year’s FIFA Soccer Tournament can be applied to all aspects of life.
These are extracted from the words of the women athletes, when they were interviewed.
- The best of the best step up.
- Practice makes progress.
- Competitive instinct is at the fore of achieving goals.
- Technical and physical growth is important to getting things done.
- Strong personalities work best toward fulfilling goals.
- Unified spirit among the team or the group is essential for success.
- Ultimate goal should be to win or succeed at the end of the chain — that is, to “win the battle and win the war”, e.g. not just be a writer or a technocrat but a successful and known one.
Without giving too much away, Megan Rapinoe from the US team mentioned that their schedule of 10 internationals before this major tournament, played a strong part in their success.
Thus, getting fit for purpose, and practice under pressure contribute toward progress.
Another player, when interviewed, mentioned that the team is going for a win of the whole Tournament and not just of a game, and this means winning the “war” not just the battle.
Altogether the US team’s “mentality”, meaning their self-confidence and will to win and their unified intent has been a big inspiration to me.
The Guardian newspaper has reported that the women's teams will have earned $90,000 in bonuses for reaching the World Cup quarter-finals, a sum that would be six times higher were they entitled to the same bonus structure as their men’s counterparts.
US Soccer pays its female players fixed salaries, something not extended to their male counterparts, and the US team have sued US Soccer over “institutionalized” gender discrimination.
Anya Alvarez from the Guardian states:
There is systematic sexism in sports that leads to unequal pay, which starts with how women are marketed by their own leagues.
The root of the problem isn’t what women are getting paid: it is the lack of foundation that they have to build from to capitalize on their talent.
When we make equal pay the central part of the conversation, we miss all the smaller things that enable a system that hurts women’s advancement in sports and their opportunity to generate equal revenue, and in return warrant equal pay.
Corporate sponsors as well as government bodies need to step up, given the real-life popularity of women’s soccer.
Once again this situation is somewhat reflective of life at large.
Your skills or your brand or what you want needs to be promoted or marketed as equal to another of quality, in order to bring in remuneration or positive exposure; and from there to build income or acknowledgement/credit or another reimbursement which you seek.
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